The Pirate and the Poem Lover

Chapter 8

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Eliza was surprised by the confidence that learning how to swim brought her. She felt like she could give a hundred speeches in front of a crowd of thousands. She felt as though anything in the world was possible and she could even fly herself to the moon if she'd merely wished to. As soon as Lafayette had finished making dinning for the crew, she walked with him to the dinning hall.

As she walked through the entryway, she was shocked to see that the very end of the table where Captain Charles usually sat, was completely empty. There wasn't a single trace of him. She tilted her head in curiosity as her mind began to wander with all the different possibilities that could have kept him from eating. And none of them were good.

Just as Eliza was about to ask where the captain was, the entire dinning hall began to cheer and shout for her. She couldn't get a single word in as she was corralled into her usual seat and hesitantly began to recite Taming of Shrew from where she had last left off. Despite all her confidence and practice, she couldn't seem to focus on what she was saying and she kept stuttering over every little word that came out of her mouth.

"I'm so very sorry but I feel I must ask.... Where is the captain?" Eliza asked in a voice so small that it was almost a whisper.

Nobody seemed to answer her and the whole crew looked around the dinning table at each other with confusion. Eliza felt a pit growing in the pit of her stomach and as the room filled with whispers and incoherent mumblings, she began to seriously worry about Captain Charles. Had he been injured again? Was he ill? Had his shoulder gotten infected?

"I belieff I saw 'im rrruning to 'is quarter erlier dis efteernoon. I 'ave not seen 'im seence, " the man Eliza remembered was named Jean Paul, stated with a shrug.

Eliza felt her worry worsen as she stared at Jean Paul with sad eyes. She took a deep breath and nodded at him, trying to offer him a kind smile to which he returned. Eliza closed her eyes and slowly let the breath out of her mouth before continuing her recitation of Shakespeare. Though she had wished she could have rushing to Captain Charles' quarters, she stayed in the dinning hall and finished the second scene of the play.

When she had finished speaking and the rest of the crew had finished eating, everyone started to disperse from the dinning table and go about their duties. Whether that meant going to rest or staying watch for the night. Eliza stood up and walked behind Lafayette as he made his way back to the kitchen.

She continued to stare at the captain's quarters until she bumped into someone. She gasped and looked up to see that Lafayette was smiling down at her with a sad look of adornment on his face. She gulped, realizing that she had been caught in her worrying and she wasn't sure how to talk herself out of it. She was about to open up her mouth when Lafayette held up his hand, waving her off.

"I fink dah Capt'n wouldn't mind you checking up on him, Wizzy," Lafayette stated in a voice so low that Eliza was the only one to hear it.

She looked up at him with wide, saddened eyes and bit down on her lips. She'd hoped he meant that because her worrying was starting to become such a torture that she felt as though she might explode. Lafayette didn't say anything, he just nodded his head in the direction of Captain Charles quarters. Without another word spoken between the two, Eliza sprinted halfway across the deck and anxiously knocked at the door.

When there was no answer, she hesitantly grabbed the knob and pushed the door opened enough to slip in without making a sound. She heard a low, pained groan and ran to the desk where she knew the captain's lantern was, lit is as quickly as she could and rushed to side of the bed. Setting the lantern on the floor, she looked over the bed to find Captain Charles in a slight daze as he rested on his stomach.